


you know you love me, baby (still, you tell me maybe)

by keatons



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-15 12:37:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2229264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keatons/pseuds/keatons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now she is really, actually, completely dead. Like wiped-out-of-existence dead, replete with the blinding white light. Three strikes and you’re out.</p><p>With Damon Salvatore as her sole companion.</p><p>She doesn’t relish the idea of an eternity with him but it could be worse. She could be alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. well that long black train got my baby and gone

**Author's Note:**

> Be sure to click the chapter title to listen to some mood music!

ch.1: [well that long black train got my baby and gone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_eE0NPArEY)

 

Bonnie Bennett has died before.

 

Twice, if she was being flexible about what death actually _was_.

 

The first time was in a shower of sparks in a high school classroom, twin rivulets of blood streaming from her nose as she unleashed that final explosion of power right into Klaus. Even if she went down in a blaze of glory, at least it was only temporary.

 

The second time was not.

 

She barely remembered it, outside of the dank smell of the underground cave. But she could never forget seeing her own body laying limp and lifeless at her feet and the sudden gut punch realization that _Oh shit, I’m really, actually dead._

Now she is really, actually, completely dead. Like wiped-out-of-existence dead, replete with the blinding white light and all. Three strikes and you’re out.

 

With Damon Salvatore as her sole companion.

 

She doesn’t relish the idea of an eternity (is time an actual thing in this dimension?) with him but it could be worse. She could be alone.

 

Which brings her back to the present moment. She and Damon are sitting across from each other in a train compartment as it chugs along at a decent clip, the nighttime landscape just a blur.

 

He’s studying her. It makes her uncomfortable and he knows it, but he continues to do it.

 

“Yes, Damon?” she huffs.

 

“Nothing, Bon-bon. Just watching,” he smirks.

 

She rolls her eyes. It is an automatic response at this point, really.

 

She turns to the side and shuts her eyes, hoping that a nap will maybe eat up some of the journey.

 

“Hey Bonnie?” he asks, stretching the syllables of her name out playfully. Well, almost. It’s more obnoxious than playful and Bonnie does not respond favorably to it.

 

“What?” she responds tersely, not even bothering to open an eye.

 

“Do you have any idea where we’re going?”

 

“You asked me when we got here. You asked me when we boarded the train. And when we sat down. No, I don’t have any idea and if I did, I would tell you!”

 

She realizes her voice had gotten quite shrill towards the end of her response. Her eyes were wide open, too.

 

“ _Sheesh_ , Judgy. It’s only a question, y’know.”

 

He has the gall to look offended at her outburst, like a little old lady clutching her pearls.

 

She scoffs and tries to fall back asleep.

 

*

Unfortunately, he shakes her back awake some time later.

 

“C’mon sleepyhead, time to get up and go.”

 

She only grunts in response, waving him away. He insistently keeps at it.

 

“Bonnie. This isn’t cute anymore; we need to go.”

 

“Fine! I’m awake!”

 

She turns and looks at him, and sees a genuine urgency in his eyes. He all but drags her out of the compartment and off the train. She’s sure to protest loudly the entire time.

 

When he finally stops, they are quite far from the train. In fact, they are so far from it she can’t even see it anymore.

 

“What the hell was that about?!” she yelps.

 

“We needed to get off.”

 

“Why? Did you not think that maybe it was taking us someplace?”

 

“Did _you_ not sense there was something really wrong with that train? We weren’t even moving!”

 

“Trains stop, Damon! Weren’t you alive when trains were invented?”

 

He splutters a bit at this, his eyes saucer wide and his eyebrows going haywire. She didn’t think an age joke would throw him that much.

 

“That’s beside the point, _Bonnie_! You were asleep; you couldn’t sense what I was sensing. That train was not heading to a good place, I could feel it.”

 

“Well, good job with the Spidey-senses, Salvatore because now we’re stranded in the middle of literally _nowhere_ with no idea of where to go!”

 

He regards her ranting with a supercilious little smirk on his face.

 

“Why are you smirking? Do you not re---oh wait, _sense_ , excuse me—that we’re so lost and so fucked!” she yells, waving her arms around her for emphasis.

 

“Wow, one f-bomb, I’m really concerned. This is a Code Red situation.”

 

The sarcasm is the last straw. She reels around and slaps him hard across the face.

 

“Ow! What was that for?” he yelps, daintily rubbing the afflicted area.

 

“Aren’t you worried or freaked out or some other normal human emotion about this?” she yells, hot tears of frustration threatening to fall from her eyes.

 

“Of course I am, Bonnie! Why do you think I dragged us off that hell-train?” he snaps, closing the space between them, “It wasn’t going anywhere good! I didn’t want to go there and I didn’t want to drag you there with me, you don’t deserve that!”

 

This startles her. All she can muster is a weak little _oh._

“That’s what I thought. Why don’t you trust me by now, Bonnie?” he bites back. He seems legitimately hurt by this.

 

“I…do, Damon. It’s just---“ she rubs her forehead in frustration, “it’s just---I’m scared. I don’t know what’s happening. My Grams didn’t really go into detail about what would happen, just that I would find peace. A hell-train to nowhere isn’t exactly peaceful.”

 

He nods in agreement.

 

“Thank you for pulling me off it,” she says.

 

“You’re quite welcome. Now, shall we?” he answers, gesturing towards the winding dark road in front of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! The idea of Damon & Bonnie on a train was very much inspired by a piece of fanart of the two of them sleeping in a train car on Tumblr; if you happen to know the name of the artist, please let me know so that I can credit them.


	2. tonight, nothing’s worse than this pain in my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonnie asks questions. Damon answers them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Open the link in the chapter title in a new tab and enjoy the music!

[ch.2: tonight, nothing’s worse than this pain in my heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UVVS5-9HvA)

 

“Damon, do you remember dying the first time?” she asks suddenly, interrupting the silence in which they had been walking. He eyes her warily.

 

“Sure I do. One does not forget being shot by his own father that quickly.” he responds, his mouth set in a tight smile.

 

She considers this for a moment. She hadn’t really known how he died in the first place. Elena must have told her about how he and Stefan had died during lunch a long time ago or something but she must have spaced out. Oh well, at least it would make for interesting conversation now.

 

“Your father doesn’t sound like a nice guy,” she says.

 

“That’s because he wasn’t a nice guy.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I really don’t want to get into this right now, Bonnie. I don’t want to talk about it,” he answers sharply, picking up the pace of his stride. She shrugs and hurries to catch up to him and his damned long legs but still, she wonders what about Papa Salvatore made the always-talkative Damon Salvatore clam up.

 

He’s mostly quiet the rest of the day.

 

When night falls, they stop and find a little clearing in the woods to camp out at. With what little magic she has in this dimension, she conjures up a small tent and some food for the both of them. They eat their respective meals in front of the tiny campfire, a rabbit for him to bleed dry and a can of chicken noodle soup for her. After he finishes off his meal, Damon stares into the fire, with an expression that Bonnie can only describe as brooding.

 

“My father preferred Stefan,” he says quite suddenly and matter-of-factly, breaking the silence between them. She sets down her empty soup can and looks at him.

 

“I could never please him. Whatever I did, it wasn’t good enough; I was too reckless, too careless. I always disappointed him in some way. One wrong step or one flippant response from me and he would thrash me, which as you can imagine, was quite often. He wanted me to run the plantation once he got too old to do it himself because it was my duty as the eldest son, even if I didn't want any part in it. I wanted to be my own man, maybe go to college up north and make my own way. I didn’t want to fight in the war but he said if I did, it would be a chance to finally make him proud of me. He told me, ‘There is nothing more important than preserving our way of life, Damon. It is the natural order of things, the right way of living.’ So I enlisted. I don’t think he ever considered that perhaps seeing your best friends getting blown to bits by cannon balls and boys even younger than me torn apart by gun fire is _not the natural order of things_ ,” he finishes bitterly.

 

He gets up brusquely and leaves to dispose of the rabbit body. Bonnie lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and looks down at her hands. All this time, she had wondered why Damon was the way that he was. She had assumed—and rightly so, considering his behavior—that he was rotten from the beginning, even before his ugly supernatural transformation all those years ago. But upon hearing just a fraction of what he had experienced, she felt the tiniest twinge of sympathy for Damon Salvatore.

 

When he comes back, he sits down next to her again. She is curious to learn more about his life pre-vampiredom, so she cautiously decides to investigate further. After all, they have an eternity together.

 

“Did you resent Stefan at all when you were growing up?” she asks hesitantly.

 

He turns and looks at her seriously, and she tenses for a brief moment.

 

“Not really. I loved him too much. He was my brother. Afterwards, sure I did,” he answers, his voice hollow.

 

“What do you mean?” She worries she is treading on sensitive ground but she presses on anyway. She had sometimes wondered how and why their relationship had deteriorated so much over the past 150 years.

 

“He forced me to turn. We both had Katherine’s blood in our system when dear old Daddy killed us. We woke up with bullet holes in our chests. I didn’t want to become a vampire, not without Katherine, not then—I didn’t want to live without her. Stefan did and he made me feed.”

 

She feels like the wind has been knocked out of her. All this time, she thought that the Salvatore brothers were easily definable: Stefan was mostly good, Damon was mostly bad and that was that.

 

He grabs her by the shoulders suddenly and looks at her with a peculiar look on his face, his eyes very wide and very sad.

 

“I never wanted any of this, Bonnie. I never wanted to be a vampire, not without her. I’ve thought to myself over and over again, if I’d never met her, I probably would have ended up a rotting corpse on a battlefield somewhere in the South and if I had survived that, I would probably have died old and unfulfilled. She made me want to live and I did live. I got used to it, enjoyed it too much, enjoyed killing too much; but at what cost? The natural order of things? My humanity? Was I---” his voice breaks---“Was I a monster from the beginning?”

 

It’s then that Bonnie realizes Damon Salvatore is actually crying in front of her, his grip on her shoulders painfully tight. He collapses into himself, falling into her lap, his whole body shaking from long pent-up, agonizing sobs. She is overwhelmed by this sudden, real outburst from him and she finds herself crying for him, for the way that he was, for herself. She wraps her arms around him, feels his hands clutch desperately at the fabric of her jacket sleeve. Bonnie cradles him to her tightly, brushing her fingers through his fine, dark hair as his sobbing devolves into sad little whimpers and his breathing evens out. It is only until she wakes up the next morning that she realizes they had both fallen asleep curled around each another.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this chapter and please let me know what you think! The show seems to have forgotten that Damon fought in the Civil War and I really wish they would explore the ramifications of it because I have a feeling it had a pretty nasty impact on him.
> 
> Here's a link to a couple terrific comment fics dealing with Damon's experiences during the war I really enjoyed!
> 
> http://softly-me.livejournal.com/160608.html?thread=2825056#t2825056


	3. hello loneliness, i think i'm gonna cry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Damon's turn to ask questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Open up the link in the title in a new tab and enjoy the mood music!

ch.3: [ hello loneliness, i think i’m gonna cry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRyrWN-fftE)

 

Damon has been weirdly distant with her in the few days after his, well, meltdown. Bonnie feels a little guilty but she wonders if it was all just boiling beneath the surface for him. After all, he has never been a real winner when it comes to managing his emotions.

 

Today is different though.

 

He stops mid-stride and she bumps into him. He looks at her with a very focused expression. It’s Bonnie’s turn to eye him warily; surely nothing good can come of what he is planning on saying.

 

“I’m really bored,” he says, “Let’s play a game.”

 

She snorts in disbelief and shakes her head. She wants to tell him that his boredom is entirely self-created but she thinks better of it since she, too, is a little bored. A game might actually be kind of fun.

 

“Okay, well, what kind of game?” she asks.

 

“20 questions-interview-sorta-thing.”

 

“Isn’t that just a conversation?”

 

“Nope. I’ll be the interviewer. You can be the interviewee.”

 

“Fine, sounds good. Go ahead,” Bonnie sighs. The game sounds a little silly but she decides to indulge him. What harm can possibly come from it?

 

“So Bonnie, what does it feel like to have died for the third time?” he asks in his best pageant host voice, jerking his hand towards her as if he is holding an invisible microphone in it.

 

“It doesn’t feel great being wiped out of existence. But I am always looking for new opportunities and ways to grow,” she responds in her best Miss America voice, smiling brightly to an invisible audience.

 

“Indeed! I have yet another question for you: how does it feel to have sacrificed yourself for your friends _yet again_?”

 

It stings a little---a lot, actually---but in the spirit of fairness, she decides to play along.

 

“Well my friends are my family so I think it was worth it,” she answers, her pageant princess smile a little dimmer.

 

“What a predictable answer from our contestant! Be honest with me now, _Bon-Bon_ : do you think your friends would do the same for you? Do you think they even appreciate all the pain and suffering you’ve put yourself through on their ungrateful behalf?” he asks, a cruel little smile starting to spread across his face.

 

Suddenly, this game is not so silly anymore. She hates that he is making her think about this again; she has tried to rationalize all of this over the years, that it was in her power and her duty to protect them, to sacrifice herself for them because she loved them. All those brushes with death were worth it when she saw her ragtag group of friends together and whole. Or so she thought. She finds herself blinking back tears.

 

“Oh, we have another question for you! How do you feel about a boyfriend you brought back from the dead cheating on you _with_ the dead?” Damon continues, his tone getting more and more vicious.

 

She starts to feel like maybe this is payback for her prodding about his early life.

 

“Well I----“ she starts but he steps in front of her and swiftly cuts her off.

 

“How do you feel about not one of your _best_ friends noticing your strangely long summer vacation or caring enough to call you?” he sneers.

 

“I don’t want to do this anymore, Damon! It’s not funny,” she snaps, hating how her voice wavers a little bit. “It’s not like _you_ noticed I was gone either. You were too busy screwing Elena and getting revenge on completely innocent people!”

 

“Actually, I did notice, Bonnie. But I didn’t care enough,” he snaps back maliciously.

 

That was it.

 

“Shut up!” she screams, shoving him hard in the chest. He takes it with that infuriating supercilious smirk on his face. She shoves him again and again and again but his expression remains the same. Bonnie wants to pummel it off his face and she summons all her furious strength to shove him hard enough he falls backwards. He looks genuinely surprised and he makes movement to get up but she pounces on him, her fist raised.

 

“What are you going to do, _Bon-Bon_? Hit me?” he taunts.

 

She does. It is a nice, solid punch square in the nose. She feels a gross twist of satisfaction when the blood immediately starts pooling beneath his nose. He has the decency to look startled but what he says next surprises her.

 

“Hit me again.”

 

She does, again and again and again, screaming that she hates him, hates what he’s done to her, to her family, to her friends. But this is not enough, she realizes even as her fists connect with his nose, his high cheekbones, his sneering mouth. It is not just him she hates. It is her parents, it is Jeremy, Elena, Caroline, Stefan and everybody else she had given her life and her powers over to again and again and been forgotten, insulted and betrayed by again and again. This thought is more painful than all the supernatural deaths in the world passing through her.

 

Bonnie starts to cry uncontrollably, the tears streaming down her face, splashing down onto Damon’s bloodied and bruised face. She delivers one last nasty blow to him before completely folding into herself, sobbing harder than she has in a while and pressing her face into her hands. Her fingers hurt, knuckles swollen and bruised from the beating she has just given Damon.

 

She cries and cries and cries, tiredly trying to make herself as small as possible. Damon reaches up to brush away a tear or two but she weakly swats his hand away, her head aching and eyelids drooping. She is vaguely aware of him shifting beneath her, maneuvering a way out from under her. The last thing she remembers before she falls asleep, exhausted from heartache and fatigue, is being gathered up in his arms.

 

*

When she awakes the next morning, she is wrapped tight in his black leather jacket. She winces a little, her eyes still puffy and aching. Her hands are not any better off. She turns around and finds Damon watching her intently. There are still flecks of dried blood on his face.

 

“Damon.”

 

“Bonnie.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t apologize. I deserved it. I pushed you and you responded in kind,” he says simply.

 

“Did I hurt you?” she asks, uncertainly.

 

“You pack quite a punch, Bennett,” he smiles.

 

She smirks to herself, a little flattered that she could rain pain upon a vampire.

 

“Bonnie, I am sorry,” he says seriously.

 

She covers his hand with her own and smiles.

 

“Thank you. I appreciate it. Really,” she tells him, “I needed it.”

 

“I couldn’t tell,” he deadpans, “being your punching bag is quite the experience.”

 

He stands up and extends his hand. She takes it, keeping the jacket around her shoulders.

 

Bonnie does not give it back to him until nightfall.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter!! Please let me know what you think and thanks so much for the kudos!


	4. it's gonna happen someday, you're gonna see things my way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click the chapter title for some mood music!

ch. 4: [it’s gonna happen someday, you’re gonna see things my way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtfXBxLzlFU)

 

Bonnie has slowly gotten used to being wherever it is they are and with that, Damon’s company. Tensions between them have lessened somewhat as they eased into the daily routine of walking along this strange path, stopping for food and sleep along the way. She is surprised that the small knapsack she conjured up seemed bottomless, almost as if it were Mary Poppins’ carpetbag. In fact, Damon had even referred to it as such last night. She had asked him how in the world he knew about Mary Poppins’ carpetbag and he had simply shrugged and smiled mysteriously, telling her that 1) he is 175 years old and 2) maybe he enjoys going to the movies. He had tried to wax poetic about having witnessed the birth of cinema but she had ignored him and instead laughed, really _laughed_ at the thought of Damon Salvatore swaggering into a movie theater back in the 1960s and willingly watching  Mary Poppins. He had looked distinctly unamused at her response and then proceeded to petulantly tell her it was playing at a drive-in out in the sticks where he had fed to his heart’s content on the would-be cinema-goers one disgustingly humid summer night in 1964.

 

She stopped laughing and suddenly felt more than a little queasy at the thought of Julie Andrews singing “A Spoonful of Sugar” in the background while he gorged himself on human blood.

 

He must have seen her expression because he had quickly told her he didn’t kill anyone that _particular_ night. She was silently relieved but it was times like that she would remember exactly what he was.

 

But then again, there have been moments where she has seen other facets of his personality and she wonders if it is because he has been seeing different sides to her, too. His voice breaks the quiet stream of consciousness she has found herself swept up in.

 

“Lost in thought?” he asks.

 

“Yeah, I suppose so,” she answers distractedly.

 

“What about? That is, if I may be so bold as to inquire.”

 

That is another thing she sometimes forgets about him---he’s _old_. His acting out like a moody, callous little boy at times does give her pause and make her question the whole “with old age, comes wisdom” nonsense. But Bonnie has come to notice that every now and then, he’ll phrase something just so and she can see the tiniest percolations of the life he lived before being consumed by vampirism. It is weirdly endearing, in a way. She refuses to tell him, of course---she wouldn’t want him to get the idea that she actually _likes_ him.

 

“Hello? Earth to Bonnie,” he jokes, waving his hand in front of her face, the silver of his ring glinting in the dying daylight.

 

“What? Did I miss something?” she asks, a dim sense of panic rising in her gut.

 

“Well…no, not really. We were engaged in pleasant conversation but you kept spacing out,” he tells her.

 

“Conversation with you is rarely pleasant,” she says dryly.

 

“You wound me, Bonnie. You really do,” he responds sarcastically, clutching his chest in a dramatic fashion.

 

She smiles, sphinx-like and merely shrugs at him.

 

“I _can_ be pleasant,” he says. His expression is so comically pouty she laughs just the tiniest bit.

 

“Is that so?”

 

“Yeah. But I choose not to be.”

 

“Why don’t you try to be? That’ll be your challenge for this evening.”

 

“Fine. There’s nothing I like more than a challenge. What will my reward be?” he asks, rubbing his hands together in a parody of greediness.

 

“Your _reward_ will be a pleasant conversation at dinner and the chance to not act like a complete jackass,” she says primly.

 

“I’ll consider it. Let’s shake on it.”

 

He extends his hand and she takes it, giving it a firm shake.

 

Nighttime arrives swiftly enough, and they set up their little camp for the evening. Bonnie notices that the trees surrounding them on this part of the never-ending road are brilliantly green and plush, compared to the barren, nearly leafless trees they had first encountered. It strikes her as kind of odd but then again, everything about this realm is odd.

 

They eat their dinners in comfortable silence and sit together—but not too closely—afterwards. Bonnie tilts her head back and gazes up at the darkened sky, the moon a fat, luminescent pearl set amongst a sprawling, luminous chain of glittering stars.

 

“My brother and I used to spend hours outside stargazing,” Damon says hesitantly.

 

She turns and looks at him, seeing how his expression is suddenly very distant and far away.

 

“Could this be the start of a pleasant conversation?” she teases him gently.

 

He smiles to himself, his eyes still fixed on the sky above.

 

“It could be. You used to be able to see so many stars at night, kind of like how it is now, actually. Especially if you went to the tops of the hills. No light pollution back then, you know.”

 

“That must have been beautiful.”

 

“It was. I always was so fascinated by it. I was actually impressed with the moon landing and all of that. It was kind of amazing”

 

“Damon Salvatore? Impressed and moved by something?”

 

“Hey! I’ve watched over a hundred years of history pass me by; I think I’m entitled to it at this point.”

 

“What else impressed the cynical, black-hearted Damon Salvatore?”

 

He gives her his own little sphinx-like smile.

 

“Photography.”

 

“ _Photography_? Are you serious?”

 

“Very.”

 

“Seriously?”

 

She would not have expected that at all. He had lived through more than a century of massive technological progress; there must have been something else more impressive. Plus, she is quite sure that photography was invented at least a few years before he was born.

 

“Seriously.”

 

“Why?” she asks. Her curiosity is furiously piqued at his purposeful obtuseness.

 

“My mother wanted to do something special for my father on his birthday one year. Stefan and I were both pretty young; I was maybe eight or nine years old so my brother would have been about two years old. Anyways, she arranged for a photographer to come to the house and take a portrait of her with the two of us. It was our first time getting our pictures taken—not my mother’s but me and Stefan---and it really _sucked_.”

 

“Why did it suck?” she asks, making a noise of disbelief. First he tells her he was impressed with photography and now he tells her that it sucked? It was more than a little nonsensical.

 

“ _You_ try standing still for hours in the gross-ass Virginia summertime with a squirming two year old, Judgy. It was _not_ fun because Stefan would not sit still; he kept moving and he was heavy because he was a chubby little kid. Plus I had to wear a starchy shirt with the bowtie and a wool jacket that made me itch and brand new shoes, which were completely uncomfortable by the way. My hair was plastered flat against my head. You should’ve seen it; it was ridiculous. Ruined my badass reputation for sure.”

 

She genuinely laughs at his vivid description of his discomfort and surprisingly, he joins her in laughing.

 

“Anyways, we finally got the picture taken after all that and my mother gives it to my father on his birthday, and get this, he actually smiled at it and said it was wonderful. He didn’t say stuff like that very often, especially where I was concerned.”

 

He swallows hard and looks down at his hands. She has _got_ to stop unwittingly touching on sensitive spots, even though he leads the conversation right to there more often than not.

 

“Is the portrait still around?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

He is totally lying to her, she can tell.

 

“C’mon, where is it?” she asks, nudging his knee gently with her own.

 

He sighs loudly at her persistence and looks at her with narrowed eyes.

 

“Shoved in the back of a drawer in my nightstand at home,” he says very quickly and practically unintelligible, which she knows is very much on purpose.

 

“So if and when we get back, you are for sure showing it to me,” she says, undeterred by his reluctance. He gives her a dismissive hand wave but there is small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

 

“Well, it certainly can’t be worse than my middle school pictures,” she offers.

 

“I doubt that very much.”

 

“I’m 100% serious. I was a mess. Braces, bad fashion sense and a bad hairstyle to go with it…a perfect storm.”

 

“That is unfortunate,” he concedes.

 

“My mom obviously wasn’t around to point me in the right direction when it came to fashion. My dad wasn’t super into it and you know how Grams dressed, very mystical and professorial. I thought her style was pretty cool so I dressed like her until Caroline told me I looked—and I quote---“like so super uncool, Bonnie, oh my god.” I asked her if she was dissing Grams and she insisted she wasn’t, even though I was pretty sure she was and we fought and then didn’t talk to each other for a week. Elena tried to get us to talk to each other but in the end, Caroline and I got over it pretty quickly. It seems so silly now…” she drifts off, finding herself quite suddenly and fiercely missing her oldest friends.

 

“A lot of stuff seems silly when you’re dead.”

 

“Yeah, I guess.”

 

“You don’t seem convinced.”

 

“It’s just—I never imagined this--any of this—ever happening.”

 

“Well as they say, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

 

“Did you seriously just quote John Lennon?”

 

“Sure did.”

 

“That was pretty corny.”

 

“Says the girl who just said corny unironically!”

 

“I never said I was a role model,” she deadpans, shrugging nonchalantly.

 

“Damn. And here I was thinking you were,” he says, snapping his fingers, “I was so foolish.”

 

“Oh haha, _Damon_.”

 

It’s his turn to shrug nonchalantly and she realizes that they’ve somehow ended up laying on their backs, side by side and watching the nighttime sky.

 

“Well, you can’t blame me, y’know. What with all your witchy powers and all."

 

“I haven’t had those for a while,” she says softly.

 

“Do you miss magic?” he asks her, his voice serious.

 

“I have a little right now,” she responds a little defensively.

 

“You know what I mean, Bonnie.”

 

She sighs. He turns over onto his side and looks at her, his gaze unnervingly intense. She keeps her eyes focused on the yellow, strangely full moon.

 

“Yeah, I do. Not having it---like I used to have---is like a missing piece. It’s like being cut off from a big part of yourself and just…cut off from nature, I guess,” she says, picking at the grass.

 

He’s still looking at her, she can feel it and when glances over at him, she notices how his expression softened.

 

“I mean, obviously witches are connected with nature and the balance and life and everything but for me, it went beyond that, you know? I always felt _better_ after spending time by myself there. I remember this one time Caroline and I were out playing in my Grams’ backyard and she had these big, beautiful red poppies in her garden. Caroline plucked a couple---with Grams’ permission, of course---and they wilted so quickly afterwards, she started to cry and I got so upset. I just remember taking the poppies into my hands and just touching them, and they started to regain color and bloom all over again. We both were confused but I made her swear not to tell anyone else, not even Elena, because I didn’t want anyone to know about it for whatever reason. Probably didn’t want to be seen as the weird kid but she never said a word of it to anyone. Now you know too, I suppose.”

 

“Your Grams probably knew.”

 

“I have a feeling she did. She was pretty observant.”

 

“Do you miss her?”

 

“I do. So much sometimes, it hurts. Like a dead weight crushing my chest.”

 

“I know what you mean.”

 

She turns over on her side and looks at him curiously. She is pretty sure he’s referring to Elena or his brother but she has a vague feeling he might not be.

 

“Do you mean Elena and Stefan?” she asks.

 

“Yeah, of course I do. But that heavy, dead-weight feeling you’re talking about? I felt that way when my mother died. She was the first person I watched die.”

 

This reminds her painfully of her father, of being the only one to watch in horror as Silas murdered him in front of an oblivious, uncaring crowd and of not even being able to really _be_ there for his funeral.

 

“How did she die?” she asks hesitantly.

 

“She died of consumption,” he tells her dispassionately, as if he is trying to stamp down any long-dead sorrows being brought agonizingly back to life. “She fell ill when I was 12 and it finally killed her shortly after I turned 14. Things were never really the same afterwards without her and I missed her more than anything for the longest time.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, delicately reaching to cover his hand with her own.

 

He just smiles at her sadly and she feels so crushingly sad for the both of them, so scarred by loss and death. They lie there side by side in silence under the prettiest, most radiant night sky she can ever remember seeing and Bonnie drifts off to sleep soon enough, cushioned by the soft, dewy grass.

 

That night, she dreams of blood-red poppies bursting back into life and of sad, blue-eyed boys wilting in the summer heat.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter and please let me know what you think! Also I apologize for the long time between updates...writer's block is the actual worst. Next chapter will be posted much sooner than this one was, that's for sure! Thanks again for the kudos and the bookmark!


	5. and i know it's got me reelin'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating has changed, for there will be things of a certain nature happening in this chapter and the following ones that necessitate it....be sure to click on the title and listen to some great music!

ch.5: [and i know it’s got me reelin’ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPs9WMWlbaU)

 

The days (weeks?) pass by and despite the genuine rapport she has developed with Damon, she misses her friends and of course, Jeremy. She still dreams of his strong, gentle arms, tender touch and kind eyes but it hurts to think about what little time they had together between her death and coming back to life and dying again. The only person she has seen in what feels like ages is the complete opposite of Jeremy in so many ways that she loses count.

 

As she and Damon eat their respective dinners that evening, she finds herself a little bored. It is not that Damon is boring, far from it; it is more the monotony of their surroundings. Surely there must be more to this realm than an endless green forest.

 

“Hey, Damon?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Do you want to, I don’t know, go exploring or something?”

 

He puts down his blood bag and considers her offer for a second.

 

“I thought you’d never ask.”

 

They walk in companionable silence through the trees, which are surprisingly full of life, birds twittering to one another while squirrels scramble across the branches. Bonnie supposes that she and Damon are not the only dead things here anymore.

 

Bonnie is the first to spot the pond in a clearing. She tugs on Damon’s sleeve and gestures towards it. When they reach it, Bonnie gasps in awe. It is gorgeous and serene; the water is as still and dark as midnight. The banks of it are equally as pretty; Bonnie kneels down to touch the little white flowers that dot the soft, marshy blue grass. She turns back to Damon and finds him stripping off his jacket.

 

“What are you doing?” she asks, her eyebrows raised and threatening to hit her hairline.

 

“Getting ready to swim,” he responds lightly as he kicks off his boots and socks.

 

His shirt is next and Bonnie quickly turns back around, feeling a blush hotly creeping up her face. She steadfastly fixes her eyes to the flowers, which for some reason had suddenly gotten ten times more interesting.

 

“Like what you see, Bennett?” he teases from behind her.

 

“In your dreams, Salvatore,” she calls right back, even as she hears the unmistakable sound of a belt unbuckling and pants dropping on to the ground. He whoops loudly as he streaks past her in a blur of whiteness and practically cannonballs into the water, disturbing the tranquility of it and of course, splashing her. She squeals in surprise, turning back again and notices that his boxers are sitting neatly inside his abandoned pants. Her cheeks are on practically on fire when she realizes just what that means.

 

He surfaces and yells at her to come in. Bonnie shakes her head no, content to sit on the soft, lovely bank and watch this strange world around her.

 

“Don’t you like swimming?” he asks, bobbing up and down in the water.

 

“Well, yeah of course! When we were younger, Elena, Caroline and I would go swimming every day during the summertime,” she answers, trailing her fingers in the temperate water.

 

“Stefan and I did too. It was the only way to beat the heat, pre-air conditioning times,” he says, “You should come into the water; it’s just about perfect.”

 

“I don’t have a swimsuit!”

 

“I don’t either and that obviously didn’t stop me!” he laughs before diving back into the water.

 

Bonnie thinks maybe she could magic herself a swimsuit but she figures she has a finite amount of magic here and it would be wasted on a swimsuit. Seized by the spirit of the moment, she decides to follow Damon’s lead. She is in the middle of taking of her shoes when he resurfaces.

 

“Decided to join me?” he calls out, waggling his eyebrows in a ludicrous manner. She scoffs at his silliness but she can’t help but find it funny.

 

“Yes, alright! Turn around and close your eyes so I can finish!” she orders. “No peeking!”

 

“Fine, fine!” he sighs dramatically, before turning away from her.

 

Bonnie shimmies out of the rest of her clothes and folds them neatly before slipping into the pool. She yelps a little bit; the water is a bit cooler than she expected. She submerges herself up to her neck, particularly careful not to expose too much; she wouldn’t want to inadvertently give him an eyeful.

 

“You can turn around now!”

 

He does and he swims right over to her until he is about an arm’s length away from her. She studies his face briefly; it is relaxed and open. Bonnie finds herself liking the way the water droplets bead on his dark lashes.

 

“You came in.”

 

“I couldn’t let you have all the fun.”

 

“Oh, yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He splashes her right in the face, gliding away cackling as she sputters in outrage. She curses him and races after him.

 

They swim around for what seems like hours, disrupting the quiet of their surroundings with their laughter. Bonnie has not felt this light and unburdened in such a long time and judging by Damon’s playfulness, neither has he; she wonders briefly if who surfaced is Damon as he was when he was still human, carefree and high-spirited. As dusk approaches, she tires out and leans up against the bank, still careful to not reveal anything. He joins her and she cannot help sneaking a glance at his broad shoulders and chest, flecked with water droplets.

 

“You know, when Stefan and I would go swimming, we would pretend we were explorers and we’d dive to the bottom of the pond, pretending to look for treasure. Stefan would grab pebbles from bottom and he’d present them to our mother. She’d play along with him, examining each one very seriously as if they were pearls from the ocean. She would call me over to come join the two of them and she’d tell us a fantastical story about how mermaids plucked them from the oyster shells and placed them there for us to find them.”

 

He smiles to himself, treading water between his hands.

 

“Your mother sounds wonderful,” Bonnie says, savoring this rare, truly unguarded moment with him.

 

“She was. Her eyes were the color of cornflowers,” he responds, his voice very soft. Closing his eyes, he leans his head back against the bank. Bonnie studies his profile for a moment and she’s weirdly pleased by how peaceful he seems.

 

“We would pretend to be mermaids when we swam. Caroline would always want to be the mermaid queen but Elena and I didn’t mind. Our stories would get really elaborate and sometimes, we’d even drag Matt into our games but he always played along. We’d all get incredibly prune-y from being in the water for so long but it was the most fun we would have all summer.”

 

“Of course Blondie would be the mermaid queen,” he murmurs.

 

“But speaking of prune-y…” she says, scrunching her nose as she examines her wrinkled fingers. He lazily opens one eye to check his own fingers, making a noise of agreement before closing his eye again. Without thinking, she climbs out of the pool but she freezes when she realizes she is standing on the bank buck-naked. She hopes and prays that Damon’s eyes are still shut. She blushes hotly when she sees that they are in fact, wide open. He is watching her with undisguised pleasure, his gaze trailing slowly over her body. Bonnie snatches her clothes up and races behind a conveniently wide pine tree close by. She hears him sigh and get out of the water and in a moment of what she _insists_ is weakness, she furtively peers out from behind the tree trunk and catches a glimpse of his naked body. A strange little thrill shoots through her and she dresses herself with shaking hands before stepping back into the clearing with a completely dressed Damon.

 

“Shall we head back?” she offers awkwardly.

 

“Of course.”

 

They walk back to their little campsite and soon enough, Bonnie starts to feel the throes of sleepiness overcome her and retires to their tent. Damon enters shortly after and lies down as far away as possible from her on the opposite side of the small tent. She would feel vaguely insulted if she hadn’t been doing the same thing, restlessly curled onto her side and facing away from him.

 

After futile attempts at sleep for what seemed like hours, she notices how Damon’s breathing has become rather uneven but when she picks up on the unmistakable sound of flesh sliding against flesh soon after, Bonnie knows _exactly_ what he is doing. She wants to hear him say it to her though, wants him to tell her it is because of this evening and the charged way things ended there. Somehow, more than anything, she wants for him to admit he is as turned on as she is right now.

 

She doesn’t. Instead, she listens to him do it and tries desperately not to think about wanting to do the same exact thing. His breathing gets increasingly unsteadier and then he moans so quietly she has to strain to hear it. Bonnie lies there still as a statue until she is absolutely certain he has fallen asleep, judging by the snoring coming from his side of the tent.

 

It is only then that she shoves her hand down the front of her pants and quickly relieves the unbearable ache that has been building there all evening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter...it's a turning point for sure! Please let me know what you think and thanks again for the kudos; I appreciate them a lot!


	6. all my life, i've been a-waitin'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click the chapter title and enjoy some fantastic music!

ch. 6: [all my life, i’ve been a-waitin’ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwHrx0r0t2s)

 

Bonnie dances around Damon in the days after the _incident_. She has come to refer to that evening as such but it’s not as if she frequently thinks about it, of course. In fact, she does not think about it at all.

 

In the very distant parts of her mind, she can hear Caroline’s voice, clear as a bell, telling her “De-Nile isn’t just a river in Egypt, Bonnie.”

 

She scoffs at what the phantom Caroline voice tells her. It is obviously irrelevant to her right now since she is thinking about it. Again. She wants to curl up and die for the fourth time from the pure embarrassment of it all. This is what she gets for having an evening of carefree fun with Damon Salvatore—with skinny-dipping, nonetheless!—she thinks sardonically to herself. Aren’t there supposed to be seven circles of Hell? Maybe listening to Damon jerk off and then getting off on it is a circle in her version of Hell. She sighs loudly, blowing the hair of her face.

 

For what it’s worth, Damon has been pretty much the same as always. It brings her some comfort that he has the decency to let the incident die in the night where it belongs.

 

“So Bonnie, wanna go skinny-dipping again?” he asks coyly, tilting his head and raising his eyebrows in an incredibly non-cute way.

 

She was wrong. So very, very wrong. Bonnie presses the tips of her fingers into her closed eyes and almost shoots back that if he wanted to see her naked again, he just had to ask. Which sets off another wave of deep, deep panic and alarm at the thought of her willingly getting naked for him. Bonnie scoffs loudly and dramatically both at herself and him, but it’s mostly at herself.

 

“No, Damon. Besides, we’re probably far away from it by now.”

 

“What a pity. I had such fun.”

 

Bonnie rolls her eyes hard; she’s pretty sure she hasn’t rolled her eyes this hard since she was a bratty 14 year old refusing to pick up her room.

 

“Yeah, I’m sure you did.”

 

“Hey, I’m not the only one who got an eyeful,” he says with a casual shrug.

 

A furious blush erupts across her face. He knows that she snuck a peek; well, several peeks if she was splitting hairs.

 

“I---what, no! First of all, how dare you; second of all---,” she splutters ridiculously, her eyes wide and gesturing wildly at nothing and proving his point entirely.

 

“Relax, Witchy. It doesn’t bother me. I have been purveyed like slab of meat before,” he says loftily with a deadpan expression.

 

“Can it, Salvatore,” she warns.

 

“Well, at least _I_ don’t eavesdrop when certain people are trying to get a very specific form of relief,” he retorts with a devious little smile playing on his lips.

 

She blanches at this. He knows, he _knows._ Shit, _shit_. Goodbye, cruel netherworld. If she could disappear from this realm, that would be terrific; actually, that would be fan-fucking-tastic.

 

“I know you heard me the other night,” he practically breathes, his mouth now just millimeters from the shell of her ear, “And you know what else I know? That a certain little witch got off on it.”

 

When she dares to look at him, he looks like the proverbial cat that got the canary. She feels unsteady all of the sudden, like her limbs are boneless lumps of flesh.

 

“If you wanted to watch, all you had to do was ask, _Bon-Bon_ ,” he murmurs, his eyes dark and hooded. He makes the nickname sound like the dirtiest, filthiest word in the English language.

 

*

 

That night, he does it again. Of course.

 

This time, she doesn’t wait until he’s done and asleep.

 

*

The next day is more or less the same as yesterday. Even though conversation with Damon is surprisingly pleasant today, Bonnie finds herself annoyingly anxious for nightfall, for reasons she is unwilling to think about in the light of day, reasons that are best left to the dark, velvet black night.

 

When nightfall arrives, she feigns tiredness and disappears inside the tent. She curls up right in the middle of it, waiting for him to stop brooding in front of the fire and step inside the tent. Bonnie waits and waits, and soon feels a little foolish for expecting a repeat of last night. Sighing, she closes her eyes and gives up on waiting and tries sleeping instead.

  
That doesn’t work for long because she hears him come in and settle down right next to her. He is closer to her than last night, his back is just inches away from hers now.

 

She waits for the telltale unbuckling from behind her.

 

When she hears it, she gives herself permission to do it, to slide her hand beneath her unbuttoned jeans and to do what she’s been aching to do.

 

Bonnie vainly tries to keep quiet but Damon tries not at all.

 

He’s breathing heavily and rather loudly, as if it is all for her benefit. She tells herself it’s distracting but she knows better.

 

“Damon, will you shut _up,_ ” she hisses. Well, it’s really more of an angry sigh but that doesn’t stop her from chastising him when they are both in the middle of getting off.

 

“ _Nope_ ,” he groans. It annoys her that even at this very moment, he remains a smartass.

 

Bonnie simply sighs and focuses on the ache between her legs. The feeling intensifies and she’s starting to breathe heavily herself, starting to get lost in the haze of it when she hears Damon’s voice cut through, dark and desperate.

 

“I know you’re getting close,” he murmurs. Damn him and his vampire hearing and smelling and whatever the hell else vampire abilities he had.

 

“Yeah, so?” she responds, breathier than anticipated. She cringes at the sound of it.

 

“I want to watch.”

 

She turns over and looks him straight in the eye, seeing the hungry look on his face even through the dark. He’s so close to her, she could reach out and touch him with her free hand. Against her better judgment, she does and he takes her fingers in his mouth and sucks greedily at them, his fangs suddenly brushing the pads of her fingertips. It’s so _wrong_ and so unlike anything she’s ever done before. Bonnie watches him watching her, moving her fingers beneath her panties in time with his hand. Up and down, down and up until it becomes too much for her to take, moving her free hand to clutch desperately at the shoulder of his jacket until she cries out, shattering the still of the night. She is barely recovered when she sees his hips buck, his eyes screwing shut and he moans so dirtily, so filthily, she feels a fresh wave of shock race through her. They lay there, side by side trying to catch their breath, her hand still fisted in his jacket shoulder.

 

Damon shifts and clears his throat, as if he is preparing to say something.

 

Bonnie jerks her hand away from his shoulder like she’s been burned and quickly turns back around, silently willing for him to do the same.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new chapter, hurrah! Things are changing for our dynamic duo....! Anyways, I hope you enjoyed and please let me know what you think. And thank you so much for the kudos!


	7. tonight there’ll be no hesitatin’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click the title and enjoy some excellent music!

ch.7: [tonight there’ll be no hesitatin’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwHrx0r0t2s)

 

Bonnie is half-asleep when he leaves the tent at the butt-crack of dawn to hunt or whatever it is Damon does before she wakes up.

 

He greets her energetically as she groggily steps outside of the tent. She inelegantly plops down next to him on the conveniently located log and grabs a piece of toast from their shared knapsack.

 

“So I was thinking about last night, Bonnie,” he begins.

 

She sighs heavily. Last night was something else. Perhaps she could tell him it was a fluke, an illusion cast while she was sleeping. He would know she was lying.

 

“What about it?” she asks, tiredly.

 

“Clearly we both have needs---“

 

She almost chokes on a piece of her toast at this. He, in essence, side-eyes her; she merely shrugs and gestures for him to continue with his wacky hypothesis.

 

“And I thought to myself: Damon Salvatore, you are a practical man. Why not take this to the next level? Why not, y’know, have sex?”

 

She most certainly chokes on her toast at this. Coughing, she shakes her head wildly.

 

“No. Nope. No way in hell; sorry, Damon! Just because we....” she does not want to say it, wants to keep it a exceedingly nice fever dream she convinced herself it was afterwards.

 

“Masturbated in front of each other?” he offers helpfully.

 

“Yeah that. It doesn’t mean I actively want to,” she sucks in a deep breath, “have sex with you.”

 

He doesn’t believe her; she can tell by his incredulous expression. Bonnie barely believes herself.

 

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” he says cheekily.

 

“I mean seriously, Damon. What about Elena, what about Jeremy?”

 

His expression becomes significantly less playful.

 

“We’re deader than dead, Bonnie and as of it right now, I can see no way back in the near future. I think that voids that concern. So while I still am very much in love with Elena, and you are…however you feel about Baby Gilbert, _I_ am in the mood to scratch this very specific itch and clearly, you are feeling the same sort of way---”

 

Bonnie presses her fingertips to her temples in exasperation. She regrets last night now more than ever in this very moment, wishing that she could travel back in time and blot out the aberration that was last night. And the night before….and the night before that.

 

“--Besides, think of it as more of a mutual need fulfillment society. A you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours arrangement, if you will. It’s not like it’d be sex with _feelings_ ,” he finishes, making a show of shivering in repulsion at the thought of _feelings_.

 

Unfortunately, he has a point. Several of them actually. She kind of hates him for making sense and reminding her that there was nothing left of them in their world. They only had each other here, really and she would not say Damon _wasn’t_ attractive and appealing in that particular way. She mulls over his offer; she sighs for what feels like the millionth time but cannot deny that this arrangement _could_ be beneficial to her. Perhaps this would ease that annoyingly familiar, persistent _stupid_ ache once and for all. Bonnie turns to him with a determined look on her face.

 

“Fine. It’s not like there’s much else to do here.”

 

“We are going to have a good time, you and I,” he says gleefully, rubbing his hands together deviously, eyebrows arched; he’s practically a caricature of himself. She merely raises an eyebrow at him as she finishes up her toast.

 

“Right, ok,” she adds, dryly, brushing the crumbs off her jeans.

 

But when he tells her how much he’s going to enjoy making her come, her skin suddenly feels too tight and too hot.

 

*

 

He leads her into the tent right after dinner. She wants to be annoyed at his eagerness, but truth be told she had been thinking about this all day to the point of distraction. It was really fucking annoying.

 

Damon turns and looks at her.

 

“Are you sure, Bonnie?” he asks, seriously.

 

“Yes. I am,” she answers quickly. She realizes then that she really fucking wants this.

 

He smiles and immediately starts removing his clothes. She hurries to do the same, kicking off her boots, tossing off her jacket and shirt, and shimmying out of her jeans. She goes to unhook her bra but he gently grabs her wrist to stop her. He’s clad only in his boxers and he’s suddenly very close to her, looking at her with both desire and tenderness.

 

“Are you ready?” he asks her. She’s taken aback at how _decent_ he is about this whole thing. Frankly, she had expected him to rush into it. Unless he’s being this way because he thinks she’s never done it before, that she’s a virgin. Oh, _crap._

 

“Damon, I’ve…done this before.”

 

“So have I. What’s your point?”

 

Oh. Well then. She rolls her shoulders, trying to relieve the built up tension.

 

“Ok, then yes. I’m ready.”

 

He guides her down onto the ground, until she is flat on her back. Her stomach knots with anxiety when he delicately pushes her legs apart and settles himself between them. She starts to panic; she doesn’t think she’s ready enough for _that_.

 

She tells him as much, the words tumbling out of her mouth.

 

“I wasn’t going to do that just yet,” he says dryly, “I’m not that boring.”

 

A wave of relief washes over her and she relaxes but her curiosity piques; what did he mean, _boring_?

 

He starts kissing her neck, down until her collarbone, down her sternum, his hands sliding under her bra to unhook it and toss it aside. Bonnie shivers involuntarily and feels exposed in the cool night air. He kisses her all the way down to her belly button and keeps going, sliding her panties off, down until his mouth is on her cunt.

 

She gasps, arching her back slightly. So _this_ is what he meant by “not that boring.” Jeremy had never done _this_ before. She had only ever read about this in the trashy Harlequin novels she’d guiltily peek at in the library or heard Caroline and Elena secretively giggle about it, like it was some arcane knowledge that you obtained once you had sex.

 

“You like that?” he asks her, from between her legs, his voice low and his eyes dark.

 

“Yeah,” she breathes, reaching down to ruffle his hair.

 

“Good.”

 

She starts to understand why it’s referred to as being “eaten out” because that seems to be precisely what he is doing. Licking and sucking and nibbling at her cunt, savoring the taste before he slides a finger, then two inside her and curves them up, striking that sensitive spot. He keeps at this, going quicker and quicker as her grip on his hair gets tighter and tighter until finally, _finally_ she comes, gasping wordlessly and grinding against his face. When he pops his head up again, he has the smuggest look on his face, his mouth wet and shining from her.

 

“Told you I wasn’t boring,” he smirks, looking entirely too self-satisfied.

 

“No, definitely not,” she says, lying there boneless. She makes a weak, halfhearted attempt to move but he stops her by stretching out his lean body over her, making it so she can feel how hard he is.

 

“We’re not quite done yet,” he tells her and she is secretly relieved. She most definitely does not want to be done.

 

He shimmies out of his boxers so he is as naked as she is. She marvels at how pale and how gorgeous his body is as he kneels between her legs, his cock pressing against her.

 

“Do you want this, Bonnie?” he asks her, his voice hoarse and his face inches from hers. Bonnie cannot help but feel a touch of nerves; he looks bigger than what she is used to. Of course, she would rather die again than tell him this; she does _not_ want to add to his already inflated ego.

 

“Yes.”

 

She cries out when he pushes into her. Damon immediately stills.

 

“Are you okay?” he asks her, his eyes wide with concern.

 

Had this been any other time, she would appreciate his concern. But right now, he's inside of her and she wants him to stay there.

 

“I’m okay. I think.”

 

“Just relax, Bonnie.”

 

“I _am_ relaxed,” she says tersely. Damn it, if he would only start moving, she would relax.

 

“You sure about that? I can see a witchy little vein popping in your forehead,” he tells her, that irritatingly familiar smirk creeping across his face. It dawns on her then that he is _teasing_ her right now, the bastard. She growls in irritation and bucks her hips, trying to get him to do something, _anything_.

 

“Damon,” she sighs with exasperation.

 

“Bonnie,” he taunts back, withdrawing himself completely.

 

“I swear to—“ she begins, preparing to give him the verbal smackdown of his un-life because he is not giving her what she wants, what he promised he would give her.

 

“Let me hear you say it, Bonnie,” he interrupts, his body very still and very controlled.

 

“Say what?”

 

“That you want to fuck me.”

 

It’s true. That is what she has been wanting him to do since he buried his head between her legs; she is so past the point of denying that she wants this, that she wants to fuck him.

 

“I want to fuck you, Damon. Just do it,” she groans, arching her back and hoping to make some sort of contact with his body but he is just so damn _far_ from her, him and his stupid smirking face, she can’t take it anymore—

 

He slams into her and she screams.

 

All that anger and frustration and tension they have both been feeling unspools between them with each hard thrust. Her eyes water from just how fucking _good_ it feels and she digs her nails deeper and deeper into his arms. Damon’s hand slips between the two of them to stroke her; Bonnie moans as he does it, her hips jerking beneath him.

 

What surprises her is that Damon is not nearly as noisy as she expected him to be; he has ceased taunting her, not a smartass comment to be made. Instead, his breathing is heavy and uneven, his eyes screwed shut and his lips parted in a lusciously dirty way. She realizes how startlingly beautiful he is at this moment, how his dark, dark hair sticks to his temples, how flushed his cheeks have become and when he opens his eyes, how very blue they are. He notices her gaping at him mid-thrust and smiles.

 

“Like what you see, Bon-Bon?” he asks flirtatiously, despite the obvious strain in his voice.

 

She does not have the mental energy to lie to him now; all her willpower is being channeled into not coming for as long as possible, to let this experience last as long as possible.

 

“Yeah,” she answers breathily.

 

“Good. I like what I see too,” he murmurs in her ear, and Bonnie knows then that she cannot last much longer. The coil deep inside her belly, so tightly and finely wound is mere moments away from snapping and judging by Damon’s arrogant little smile, he knows it and is proud of it. The _bastard_.

 

It happens and _happens_ , and she practically sobs because it feels amazing and she does not quite know why. Wave after wave strikes her, like it has been pent up for too long and Damon rides her through it, raptly watching it wash over her until he cries out suddenly, his hips bucking sharply against hers one last time.

 

They lay there for a moment, sweaty and breathless, before he delicately disentangles from her and stretches out, reaching for his boxers and her bra and underwear. He passes her stuff to her and she slowly dresses again, taking her sweet time.

 

He looks at her curiously after laying side by side for several minutes.

 

“Well,” Damon says, breaking the silence, “that was fun.”

 

Bonnie cannot help but agree.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I cheated and used the same song twice!! It's just that good and fits well for these two chapters. Anyways, thanks for reading and please let me know what you think! And thank you again for the kudos!


	8. if you know you can’t take it, well then baby, why try to give me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click the title!

ch.8: [if you know you can’t take it, well then baby, why try to give me? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQvco4pFtDU) 

 

When she wakes up the next morning, Bonnie notices about three things: one) she is a little sore from last night’s misadventure, two) Damon is still fast asleep, his arm flung around her waist and three) she can see what looks to be a cabin in the distance. She can begrudgingly believe last night happened and can kind of believe that they ended up spooning at some point in the night but she _has_ to be hallucinating the cabin. It was most certainly not there last night---well, maybe she’s not so certain, considering that she was somewhat distracted. Still, it is very, very strange and Bonnie intends to investigate it. She gets up, wiggling out from under Damon’s arm, and throws on the rest of her clothes.

 

“Damon,” she says, kneeling down next to him and gently nudging his shoulder.

 

He groans something unintelligible and rolls over, turning his back to her. She purses her lips and sighs in annoyance.

 

“Damon, come on. There’s something you have to see.”

 

She can’t quite make out what he says but she catches “you” and “already naked.” Her eyes roll of their own accord and she feels a hilarious twinge of regret that she ever let this idiot, lying there in his boxers like a hungover frat boy, see her naked. Since she has a little magic, she decides to give him a blast from the past in the form of a brain aneurysm.

 

He yelps and jerks awake, clutching his head. The look on his face is accusatory but she just raises her eyebrow at him.

 

“What the hell! Why!”

 

“You weren’t getting up.”

 

“Yeah, well, next time, don’t do that. Wake me up in a nice way.”

 

“I tried.”

 

“Then try harder.”

 

Bonnie just shrugs at his insolence and tosses his clothes to him.

 

“This is no way to treat someone who just gave you the best night of your life,” he grumbles as he dresses himself.

 

Her cheeks turn bright red, she can feel it, so she turns away from him and she tries to keep her cool. Well, kind of.

 

“I’ve had better nights,” she lies.

 

“Whatever you say, Bonnie,” he says sarcastically, “Even though, as I recall _you_ were the one who—”

 

“Enough about last night,” she cuts him off, “something weird is happening. Look, do you see that cabin thing?”

 

“Yeah, so?”

 

“That wasn’t there last night.”

 

“No. Definitely not,” he frowns.

 

“Let’s go check it out.”

 

As they walk towards it, Bonnie notices that the cabin looks strangely familiar. In fact, she realizes pretty quickly that it looks like a smaller version of the Salvatore boarding house and she figures he realizes it too when she hears him mutter _what the fuck_ under his breath. When they get closer, the building gets bigger, though not quite as large as the real thing. Finally, Bonnie and Damon make it to the front door and she knocks on it.

 

“Why the hell are you _knocking_?” he asks.

 

“We don’t know what’s behind that door,” she responds.

 

It doesn’t really matter because the door swings open and the inside is a perfect duplicate of the boarding house’s interior.

 

“We know now,” he says sardonically.

 

They step inside and it is eerie how _perfect_ everything is in here, from the burgundy wallpaper to the dark leather furniture and elaborate, marble fireplace in the living room.

 

“I for one am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed,” Damon remarks, “Even though it shall be empty tonight…”

 

He looks at her coyly.

 

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she tells him dryly, “Go think of Elena and jerk off,”

 

This seems to actually annoy him for some reason; she can see his narrowed eyes and mean little pout.

 

“Well, I’m pretty sure what we did last night resulted in this,” he says snidely, gesturing at their familiar surroundings. She scoffs; them doing what they did _definitely_ did not generate any sort of legitimate magic to create this.

 

“I didn’t give birth to a house over night,” she says stubbornly.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bonnie.”

 

“I’m not being ridiculous.”

 

“Right. Ok. Haven’t you noticed how things have been _changing_ around us?”

 

He is not wrong at all about this. She _has_ noticed it and she tells him as much, how the landscape changed from barren, dead trees to a veritable paradise of lush greenery with its flashes of life. What she doesn’t tell him and doesn’t really want to tell herself is that she has noticed how _they_ have changed since the beginning, isolated and trapped in this unearthly dimension.

 

*

 

Shortly after Damon passes out on the couch (she wonders how much sleep a vampire really needs), Bonnie wanders through the house since she had never really seen much of it beyond the living room and library when she was alive. So naturally, she quietly makes her way upstairs and explores the first room she sees there. It is most likely a guest room in reality, because the bedroom lacks any sort of personal touches, beyond the perfunctory bed and nightstand. The next room she wanders into must be Stefan’s, given the bookshelves strewn with leather-bound journals and the large desk, with pens and scraps of paper scattered across it, situated close to the picture window. The lived-in appearance of this space is a little unnerving but she would rather have this than a sterile, empty room. As she wanders out of Stefan’s room, she casually makes her way towards what has to be Damon’s room at the end of the hall.

 

She cracks the door open to his room and her jaw nearly hits the floor. The room is airy and spacious, with the impressively large bed as the centerpiece. She runs her fingers across the surface of the nightstand and it is surprisingly spotless. The afterlife keeps a clean house, she muses as she peeks into the bathroom, which is enviably big as well. It dawns on her that she hasn’t bathed or changed her clothes since she has been in this realm but she doesn’t feel grimy or unwashed. This place is _seriously_ weird.

 

Bonnie suddenly remembers the daguerreotype Damon had told her about and wonders if maybe it’s in his nightstand drawer here, too. She pulls open the nightstand drawer, which is annoyingly deep and long, and digs around until she touches upon something promising. She tugs it out and when she sees what it is, she knows that it must be it. It is enclosed in a slender gold case and when she opens it up, her breath catches when she finally sees the photograph.

 

There, in faded sepia, is a pretty woman seated in a chair that must be Mrs. Salvatore with a fat-cheeked, bewildered toddler that has to be Stefan in her lap, cradling him with one arm. Her other arm is wrapped affectionately around a petulant little boy standing next to her, with a stiff shirt collar and stray curls sticking up from his hair, that is undoubtedly Damon. Bonnie traces her fingers around the edge of the portrait, wanting to commit every endearing detail of it to memory. She can see the resemblance between Damon and his mother, from the dark, surprisingly curly hair to the light eyes and high cheekbones, but her kind, serious expression reminds her very much of Stefan. Bonnie brushes away tears she didn’t realize were beginning brim in her eyes; the photograph is exceptionally poignant and a sharp pang of fresh grief reminds her of her own family and friends, broken apart by death and sadly wonders if they miss her as much as she misses them.

 

“What are you doing?”

  
Damon’s anxious voice shocks her out of her reverie and she snaps the case shut and shoves it back in the drawer when she sees him hovering around the doorframe.

 

“Are you crying?” he asks, striding over and sitting next to her on the bed, his posture ramrod straight. Tenseness radiates off of him in waves and she is a little concerned she has overstepped some invisible boundary.

 

“I’m sorry, I was just wandering around and----” she starts babbling, hurriedly wiping her eyes on her jacket sleeve and feeling rather foolish for her lack of foresight.

 

“Let me see it,” he says quietly, nodding towards the gold case sticking up out of the drawer. Bonnie fishes it back out and awkwardly hands it to him. He opens up the case and stares hard at the photograph, tracing his fingers over it like she had but with much more intensity, his lips pursed and eyebrows drawn together.

 

“Damon?” she asks softly.

 

“You can see how much of a punk-ass kid I was in this,” he jokes halfheartedly, his voice wavering. She lightly brushes her fingers against his arm, still so apprehensive about any sort of intimate touch even in the wake of what had happened last night, and gets up and gently closes the door behind her, leaving him be with his memories. When she finally settles on a room close to his, she can hear his muffled sobs drifting from behind the closed doors.

 

Bonnie doesn’t see him for the rest of the day.

 

*

 

Later in the night, he slips into her bedroom. Bonnie jerks awake from a fitful sleep and sees him sitting next to her on the bed, silhouetted in the moonlight streaming through the windows.

 

“Are you alright?” she asks, pulling the blankets closer to her.

 

“Are you?”

 

“No,” she answers him honestly. She has rarely, if ever, lied to him. Why start now?

 

“Me neither,” he tells her, lying down next to her. All of the sudden, Bonnie feels a brief flash of nervousness at having him so close to her and she’s annoyed with herself for even feeling this way at all. Why would his being close to her now, all emotional and raw, bother her? He’s been this way with her before and she scoffs at herself; purposefully ignores the frantic wheels starting to turn in the back of her mind.

 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

 

“Not really.”

 

They don’t.

 

The two of them lay there quiet and unmoving; the only sounds in the room the ticking of the clock and their breathing.

 

That is, until she feels his hand move tentatively towards hers and he laces his fingers through her own so painfully and delicately slow that she wants to cry. Of course, she doesn’t---that would be silly, they’ve held hands before but not like _this_ ; instead, she tries to shove this strange new (is it really new though? No, no she won’t think about that now) mix of feelings back into the neat little box she had constructed for them.

 

So they continue to lie there, hand in hand in the dark. It’s a little weird at first, to be sure, for so many reasons—the most integral is that _he_ initiated it this time and the ultimate reason is that this show of intimacy is oddly sweet, despite his strict insistence yesterday was nothing more than a mutually beneficial experience. Something inside her sprouts into life, a tender little blossom poking through the walls she has built around herself. Bonnie can feel her eyelids start to droop, threatening to shut completely but not before Damon scoots closer and closer to her, very quietly—almost like he doesn’t want her to notice him getting so close to her.

 

“What are you doing?” she whispers.

 

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he is now so close to her that he can lay his head on her shoulder. And he does. Her heart catches a little bit, bypassing the logical part of her brain flipping out at this, that she’s letting somebody like _him_ , with all his casual cruelty and bitterness, rest his head on her shoulder, their hands still twined together. It’s just so strangely and quietly wonderful for whatever reason, she relaxes into their sort-of embrace and pulls the blanket over them before she falls into a deep, peaceful sleep.

 

*

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this....another chapter?! I hope you enjoyed reading it and thanks again for the bookmarks & kudos!!


	9. come what may, do you ever long for true love from me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click the title for some mood music!

ch. 9: [come what may, do you ever long for true love from me? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty31QY5ZGHo) 

 

Bonnie figures it has been more than a few months since she and Damon have been in this bizarre realm. She can’t complain too bitterly now though, since the pseudo-Salvatore boardinghouse is much more comfortable than the hard dirt that she had been sleeping on before it appeared.

 

She and Damon have developed their own little routine; there are days where they don’t say much of anything to each other but most days, they keep up a steady stream of alarmingly affectionate bickering but somehow, they always spend the evenings together in the library after dinner. Sure, there are breaks in their routine, like the heated game of Monopoly that lead to them not speaking to one another for an entire week or when they had gotten into a bitter disagreement about how to properly organize a bookshelf.

 

(Damon had insisted books should be organized alphabetically; Bonnie favored arranging them by theme).

 

Usually though, Bonnie studies the grimoire that had conveniently appeared in her room one morning, trying to find a way out of wherever they are while Damon reads a book from one of the precarious piles of them surrounding his chair.

 

After tripping on a stray book one evening, Bonnie had asked him, with more than a hint of exasperation in her voice, why he didn’t just leave the books on the bookshelf. He told her that he had not read these _particular_ books since the previous century and leaving them next to his chair was a reminder to reread them.

 

“Think of it as a more of a personal literature review,” he told her. She sighed defeatedly and dramatically but figured it was a way to pass the never-ending time in this dimension.

 

Later, when he had dozed off, Bonnie quietly stole Dracula away from his pile.

 

*

 

Damon notices her reading it the following evening, his eyes narrowing when he realizes she had snatched it from his precious pile.

 

“You took that from my meticulously organized pile,” he grumbles as he settles in his chair, a glass of bourbon in one hand, Frankenstein in another.

 

“You weren’t reading it,” she responds lightly, “Why do you have it anyways? Isn’t kind of, I don’t know, redundant?”

 

“It was a gift from me to Stefan; I thought it was hilarious but apparently _he_ didn’t because he snapped my neck. We’ve moved past that now,” he tells her airily.

 

Bonnie can’t help but laugh before returning her attention to the book.

 

A few hours later, Damon disappears into the basement. Whatever he is doing down there, it’s making a lot of noise but she is so surprisingly engrossed in what she is reading, she pays no mind to it.

 

He resurfaces after a solid half-hour, with an old projector, film reels, and a sheet in hand.

 

“Want to watch _Dracula_?” he casually asks.

 

Eyes saucer-wide, she nods yes and sets her book down, hurrying over to help him.

 

“Why do you have actual film _reels_ anyways? Should I add larceny to your list of crimes?” she asks as they tuck the sheet up against the bookshelf to create a makeshift screen.

 

His noncommittal shrug tells her all she needed to know.

 

As the projector whirs to life, they both settle down on the couch and Bonnie soon finds herself caught up in the story unfolding on the flickering screen.

 

“They should’ve hired me to play Dracula; my face is so much more photogenic than Bela Lugosi, don’t you think?” he whispers in her ear, halfway through the movie.

 

“I’m not going to answer that question. And I want to watch the movie, not listen to your ego trip,” she hisses at him, tossing a pillow at him without tearing her eyes away from the screen.

 

He just laughs until she fixes him with a glare that could turn him to stone. He is quiet the rest of the time.

 

When she wakes the next morning, there is a vase of scarlet poppies on her nightstand.

 

Bonnie smiles to herself.

 

*

 

It is odd how easily and quickly the two of them have settled into this easy domesticity. Bonnie had never envisioned _willingly_ spending time with Damon like this, much less having regular sex with him.

 

(“Undoubtedly the best way to past time,” he had quipped to her, post-coitus)

 

Because she is. Rather, they _are_.

 

She wants to be embarrassed and guilty, wants to pretend like she imagines it’s Jeremy over her and beneath her and inside her every time they do it, which at this point is more and more frequent. But she _doesn’t_ , that’s the thing. She firmly chalks it up to the simple fact that what the two of them are doing is no more than a mutual need fulfillment, a simple you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours arrangement. Besides, it’s not sex with _feelings_ , as she and Damon had agreed upon initially and reiterated to each other countless times in countless ways. No, no it had _definitely_ not turned into that.

 

But quite recently, a poisonous thought has taken root in her mind and she finds herself wondering hatefully if he thinks of Elena when he fucks her.

 

She doesn’t want him to. Bonnie wants him to think only of her

 

*

 

Tonight, she realizes he has never kissed her once in all the times that they have done it. To be honest, she hasn’t _just_ realized it; it has been bothering her lately and it bothers her now, as she sits and tries to focus on the dusty pages of the grimoire spread across her lap. She fidgets and her eyes keep roving off the page. She feels so stupid for getting so annoyingly fixated on this. Why _hasn’t_ he done it? Or why hadn’t she done it, just gone right ahead and grabbed his stupid, beautiful face and kissed him, right on his terribly pretty mouth? Bonnie nervously chews on a hangnail and jiggles her leg, the wheels in her head turning faster and faster until she feels like she might just spin out of this universe.

 

“Bonnie?” Damon asks her, his voice breaking the dizzying flurry in her head.

 

“Yeah, what?” she answers distractedly.

 

“Why are you so twitchy? I can see you bouncing around out of the corner of my eye and it’s ruining my concentration on this delightful book.”

 

“Like you haven’t read it before!”

 

“Not my point, Witchy. What’s the deal?”

 

Bonnie is tongue-tied, rooted to the spot and feels more like a deer in headlights than she has ever felt her life. She wars internally with herself, debating if she should bring it up, if it would even be worth it to bring it up.

 

“Why haven’t you kissed me?” she blurts out, the words tumbling out of her mouth swiftly and awkwardly and she immediately, painfully regrets it, wishing futilely that her brain had caught up to her mouth.

 

For the briefest sliver of a second, he looks like a deer in headlights but he quickly recovers, his eyebrows raised so sharply they are in danger of disappearing into his hairline. Bonnie feels like maybe she should wither up and die _again_ from sheer embarrassment. Or disappear from existence entirely, like completely and for good. Either option would work for her right now; she is the farthest thing from picky right now.

 

“Why would you even ask me that?” he asks incredulously, the pitch of his voice suspiciously higher. “Do you even _want_ to kiss me?”

 

Oh no, oh _no._ She does not want to touch that subject with a ten-foot pole, does not want to be near it at all. In fact, the matter of whether or not she, Bonnie Bennett, actually wants to kiss Damon Salvatore should simply just not be discussed at all.

 

“No! Of course not! I was totally joking,” she scoffs in a panicked manner, hoping and praying he cannot hear the way her heart is racing right now. “Besides, it’s not like you want to kiss me either.”

 

“Definitely not.”

 

“Ok, then. Pretend I never said anything.”

 

“I will.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Good.”

  
“ _Fine_. I’m going upstairs now.”

 

Slamming her grimoire shut, she gets up, her legs feeling annoyingly Jello-like and leaves with nary a goodbye, because frankly, her pride is a little wounded right now. Actually it is more than a little wounded; it is _a lot_ wounded. Why wouldn’t that jerk want to kiss her? He has had plenty of opportunities to do so but at the same time, she sure as hell did not want to kiss his smug, obnoxious face either. No, _never_.

 

Later that night though, he makes his way to her room and unsurprisingly, it results in what the two of them usually do; only this time, the pace is just a tad more frantic than usual. It is almost as if, Bonnie suspects, they are trying to distract themselves from a certain something else.

 

But Damon stills all of the sudden, his face mere inches from hers, his eyes curiously bright, and her heart threatens to flutter right out of her chest. They look at each other for a good, long minute and Bonnie feels strangely exposed and vulnerable in the heady weight of his intense, unyielding gaze.

 

Then he kisses her, all at once tender and ferocious. When he pulls away, she is practically breathless and suddenly, acutely aware of every feeling racing through her body, most of all the aching feeling of wanting to kiss him more and more.

 

So she does. She kisses him like a woman possessed, throwing her arms around his neck and drawing him closer to her. He responds to it, fervently kissing her mouth, her cheeks, her neck---practically everywhere. She gasps as he does it, running her fingers over the sharp curve of his jaw and through his dark hair, and it is better than she had ever expected or imagined this to be.

 

And now when he fucks her, cradled between her legs, it’s desperate and intense and _needy_ and she just can’t seem to get enough of him and his wicked, beautiful mouth and takes all she can of him before it finally hits her and his name slips out of her mouth in one long, liquid sigh. He makes the most beautifully feral sound she has ever heard when he comes just moments after, kissing her so hard and so fiercely it is like he wants to consume her whole and she just might let him.

 

They lay there for a few moments, his head resting against her chest while she strokes his hair. A sudden feeling blooms in brilliant, dazzling color inside her that she recognizes as something more than just mere satisfaction.

 

“You kissed me,” she breathes, softly and wondrously.

 

His expression quickly shifts from one of calm to agitation and he sits up abruptly.

 

“I’ve kissed a lot of people,” he says curtly.

 

Bonnie is taken aback. This outburst of nastiness is not something she has seen from him in months.

 

“What’s your problem, Damon?” she asks him hotly, kicking herself for getting so irritated with his weird, sudden ambivalence in the wake of what was an exceptionally pleasant time.

 

“I want to go home, Bonnie! Why haven’t you figured out a way back yet?” he snaps, not even looking at her while he shoves the rest of his clothes on.

 

Something more is bothering him; she knows it. She has not spent months with this loser without noticing certain personality quirks of his. Or in this case, certain major coping flaws he has but it’s not as if she excels at that either.

 

“You think I don’t want to go home either?” she demands, pulling her nightgown and underwear back on, struggling to get out of the bed at the same time because she is just so damn _mad_ at him.

 

He says nothing to her and instead strides purposefully out of her room, down the stairs and into the library. Bonnie follows him, of course. She grabs his hand, pulling him back around to look at her.

 

“Damon!”

 

He doesn’t look at her; yanking his hand away, he stares straight ahead and pours himself a very full glass of bourbon, enough so that it sloshes around the rim and he tosses it back, slamming the glass down hard afterwards.

 

“Damon, stop ignoring me!”

 

Tears of frustration prick at her eyes; it is like all the months they have spent together, talking and—dare she admit to this?—bonding and getting to know each other better than maybe even Elena and Jeremy knew them, is all for nothing.

 

It might not be though, because when Bonnie reaches up and gently touches his face, Damon closes his eyes and leans into it ever so slightly. But then he jerks away from her and her hand drops uselessly back at her side. She straightens up and sets her jaw, fixing him with a steely look.

 

“Fine. Throw a tempter tantrum. Leave, for all I care. I’m going back to bed.”

 

Leaving him to brood silently and angrily in front of the fireplace, she marches upstairs and forcefully shuts her door. Lying there in bed, she stares furiously into the darkness, fists balled and arms tightly crossed, like it has somehow personally offended her.

 

When Bonnie hears the front door slam, she loudly curses him and punches her pillow until she cries.

 

*

 

Bonnie does not bother looking for Damon’s sorry ass the next day. In fact, it might be nice to have the place to herself for once and not have to worry about a 175 year old vampire throwing a fit for an unknown reason.

 

But the problem is that she knows the reason. She just doesn’t want to think about it or even fully admit to herself that it exists within her too, that it has been flowering, rich and vibrant, over the course of these past months. Life here had been giving the two of them its own signs, signs that she recognized but did not want to acknowledge and she suspected he did as well.

 

Last night seems to have upset the delicate, spun-glass balance they had struck between the two of them, starting with that first night where they had agreed upon no feelings. That was the frustrating part, as she had come to realize last night. A feeling of some sort between them _had_ already existed, before any of the physical complications manifested themselves. It was no longer that she simply found him an attractive person that she enjoyed having sex with; it had morphed into her considering him as something more than a friend. It was not love, she is sure of it, but it is something teetering dangerously close.

 

The day passes by languidly and Bonnie spends most of it in the library, hunched over her grimoire, combing through it any promising leads. When nightfall arrives, the grimoire still offers next to nothing. Exhausted, she closes her eyes and rests her head against the plush arm of the couch.

 

When the front door slams shut, she jerks back awake and sees Damon sitting across from her.

 

“You’re back,” she says coolly.

 

“Yeah, I just couldn’t stay away,” he responds, tiredly rubbing his hand across his face.

 

She stares at him reproachfully, arms crossed tightly.

 

“Care to explain last night?”

 

He stiffens, his fingers digging into the arms of the chair.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

Clearing his throat, he stands up and starts pacing like a caged animal in front of the fireplace. She watches him, trying to decipher his sudden aversion to talking.

 

“I wasn’t myself last night,” he starts awkwardly, not looking at her.

 

“You were being an asshole,” she says.

 

“If you say so, it must be true” he mutters sarcastically.

 

“Don’t do that.”

 

“Do what?”

 

“Act all glib and not acknowledge what’s actually bothering you,” she responds, “We’ve spent enough time together for me to recognize when something is bothering you.”

 

“I’m not bothered at all. See, not at all,” he says snippily, giving her the fakest, meanest smile she has ever seen.

 

“If you weren’t so bothered, why did you freak out after we…did that thing,” she asks, trying vainly to stay calm and patient but he was making it nearly impossible.

 

“What, after we kissed? Like I’ve told you, Bon-Bon, I’ve kissed lots of people,” he scoffs irritably.

 

Slamming the grimoire down on the table, she moves closer to him. Her patience is so, so close to vanishing into thin air because of his stubbornness. When he turns his back to her, it dissipates entirely.

 

“Well, if you’ve kissed so many people, why did kissing _me_ make you so damn upset?” she demands, practically yelling at him. The lights in room start to flicker, stirred by her furious energy breaking to the surface.

 

“Because I _love_ you, Bonnie!” he yells back at her and suddenly, it’s like the wind has been knocked out of her. She stands there in front of him, dumbfounded, their faces just inches apart.

 

“But I shouldn’t,” he says quietly, his voice breaking just the tiniest bit, “I’m supposed to love Elena but it’s you I can’t stop thinking about. I like having you with me, here and it’s just…”

 

Damon starts pacing again, all his bravado stripped away, the tender, vulnerable insides he fought so hard to camouflage exposed for her to see. Bonnie stands there, completely bewildered by his admission and barely processing her own emotions.

 

“I mean, why would you even _like_ me? You know who I am and what I’ve done,” he laughs bitterly, “But you still want to be around me. It’s like…I don’t---I’m better with you,” he finishes sadly, gently grabbing her shoulders and drawing her closer to him.

 

She looks at him, and notices how sad-eyed and strung bow-tight he is right now. The walls she has built around herself swiftly crumble brick by brick in the face of his admission; the little sprouts of feeling there flower fully and crystallize in this moment. The spun-glass balance shatters completely and she can admit to herself that she loves him, too.

 

Bonnie cups his face with her hands, tilting his chin up so that their eyes meet. For the first time in her life, Damon seems shy, his gaze full of tender yearning, like he wants her so much he cannot bear to look at her.

 

She kisses him gently. Then again and again and again, murmuring that she loves him as he hungrily kisses her back, brushing his fingers through her hair and holding her close to him.

 

The grimoire bursts open and a brilliant column of light shoots out, engulfing the entire room and pulling the two of them into the light.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter! Isn't the music just beautiful? I really hope you enjoyed it and I wanted to thank you again for leaving kudos, bookmarking and subscribing to my humble fic. Please let me know what you think!


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